I am aware, however, that this is a highly unscientific position to take up.
That there should be so little in the way of adequate record concerning the development of this indispensable adjunct of the violin is not a matter for great wonderment, for, as has elsewhere been shown, the earlier bowed instruments were of such primitive construction, and, consequently, so weak in tone that they were totally unsuited to the purposes of ceremonial or pageantry; two subjects which form prominent features in ancient pictorial representations. And if we come to what we fondly term "more civilized" times, we find such crude drawings of early viols and kindred instruments that we must not be surprised if such an apparently unimportant detail as the bow should receive still more perfunctory treatment at the hands of the artist.
We must also remember that the word "fiddlesticks" is still applied to anything that is beneath contempt in its utter lack of importance.
Undoubtedly the idea of exciting vibrations in a stretched string by means of friction is one of great antiquity; so much so, indeed, that the question of origin becomes merely one of conjecture. True, the majority of writers look upon the bow as a development of the plectrum, but this is a theory that I must confess does not strike me as being satisfactorily probable. To paraphrase a popular expression, "fingers were made before plectra," the latter being an "improvement" on nature's contrivance. And I see no reasonable objection to the supposition that friction may have been used as a means of tone-production prior to the introduction of the plectrum.
The great dissimilarity between the producing of sound by plucking, and that by friction is such that I see no occasion to evolve one from the other and consider their introduction most probably coeval.
When we come to the direct percussion of a string, as in the dulcimer, piano, etc., we at once perceive a possible connection between the hammer of the one and the rod or bow of the other: the accidental colliding of the bow with the strings of its accompanying instrument would soon suggest experiments ending in the forming of dulcimer-like instruments.* But if we grant that the art of plucking a string had first advanced as far as the substitution of a plectrum for what Mace calls the "nibble end of the flesh," I fail to see how such an implement could suggest the friction of a string, as, if short enough for manipulation in its original use, it would not be long enough to excite the continuous vibrations characteristic of the bow.
* The bow is frequently used now as a means of percussion for certain effects.
I do not accept the theory of a long plectrum used for pizzicato purposes, as I consider, with Engel, that such an implement would have been unmanageably clumsy even for the primitive music of the ancients. Whenever I see a rod, as in the accompanying drawing of the Assyrian Trigonon, I maintain that its purpose was to excite frictional vibrations.
| FIG. 2. |